Meghan’s Holiday Film Photos 2022

Like every summer, for most of August I took my holiday time and went home to Manitoba for a few weeks. My parents still live on the farm there and it is a lovely serene getaway from the loudness and bustle of the city here. It is nice to chill by the pool, sit in the hammock and listen to the birds and of course take some photos! I always bring too many cameras and too much film when I go home, but I also always love taking photos of the yard and how it changes. Many years it is much dryer there than Vancouver, as you can imagine, but this year they had gotten alot of rain so the yard was very green and lush. One of my favourite films to shoot there is the Lomochrome Purple, as you need alot of green to really make that film pop. I’d gotten great results with the purple there in the past so I brought another roll to shoot there this year too. I also had a new (to me) camera to try and a whole host of other ideas that as usual don’t always come to fruition, but I always have fun wandering the yard with Hudson and shooting.

Here’s my camera line up that I took with me!

 

 

As usual, I didn’t get to do all the things I wanted to do on my holiday, but some how there’s just never enough time! I didn’t shoot much on the Stylus Epic or alot of Instax film this time around, so I have yet to finish the film in the Stylus. As well, I have a couple shots left on the Lomo Fisheye! It was my first time shooting that little camera though, so hopefully that will work out and I will have some more images for a future newsletter or blog post.

What I did shoot alot of was my new Fujifilm GA645 Professional. I just got this camera and had shot a couple rolls with it previously, but I was excited to take it home and shoot with it some more.

 

 

I was very impressed with its sharpness and of course ease of use being autofocus. I don’t own alot of autofocus film cameras, so it was nice to shoot it and not have to think too much about settings and focusing. It has more manual settings, but wanting the truly “auto” experience, I shot this camera purely on full automatic P mode. That being said, I was disappointed how it did miss the focus on a couple occasions, focusing behind my subject matter. They were not particularly cooperative subjects mind you, but of the 3 rolls I shot with this camera there were 3 shots that were out of focus. Knowing that can happen now with moving subjects though, I will be sure to watch how I’m focusing with this camera. Beyond that, I was fully impressed with it’s sharpness and exposure. It even did a fantastic job of shooting a sunset, which can definitely be hit or miss with film and with autofocus cameras. I shot two rolls of Kodak Gold 200 and one roll of expired Fujifilm Pro 400H. Here are a couple shots of each! See captions below for which film is which…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I always love taking my Rolleicord home to shoot on the farm too. It lends itself well to a slower photo taking process and I love wandering around the yard taking photos with it. This year I shot just a couple rolls of Kodak Ektar 100 in it, but I’m always impressed with the sharpness of this camera as well. Ektar has a great extra little punch of color too that is great on the farm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I mentioned, I always love shooting some of the Lomochrome Purple film when I’m home as well, in the hopes of catching all the greenery in full purple glory. I have found in the past and it seems especially this time around it can be hard to get anything but a white sky. I managed to get a bit of blue in one image but unless it is a fully bluebird kind of day it is hard to get the blue sky effect with this film. Also I was shooting it this time with the Konica C35 rangefinder camera which is fully automatic exposure, so not being able to manually adjust settings also made it harder to push that darker sky. I did manage to get some great purple this time but I felt the sharpness was not there like it has been in the past. I’m not sure if it was that the film perhaps is getting a bit old at this point (as some I’ve had for awhile now) or if the 35mm version of the purple is a bit less stable than the 120 version as I have mostly shot the 120 in the past. This roll I also tried shooting at 200 iso, whereas in the past I have shot it at 400 iso. Either way, here are a couple of the more interesting shots that turned out. I did really love how fluffy it made the tall grass look and how ethereal my white horse, Capri, turned out, making for quite the striking scene.

Thanks to Rocket Repro as always for doing a great job developing and scanning all my photos as well! Check them out if you are in Vancouver and even if you aren’t you can send you film in to them for developing, printing and/or scanning. www.rocketrepro.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

And while they aren’t film shots, I did also shoot my Fujifilm X-T2 a little bit. I mostly used it in the end for the zoom lens I took with me (not pictured above), which is the Fujifilm XF 50-230 f/ 4.5-6.7. Here are a few critters from the yard I captured with that combo – including a type of frog none of us had ever seen on the farm in the past 40+ years of living there, which was sunning itself on the rhubarb leaves and one of many ground squirrels that kept Hudson busy for hours chasing down various holes.